Contributing to OpenStreetMap (OSM) can be a daunting prospect. Even seasoned geographic information systems (GIS) analysts take time to learn OSM’s tagging and editing conventions, tooling, and jargon. Updating a map based on third-party data sets is even more challenging. To do that, a contributor might need to play four different roles: An engineer (to write software or extend JOSM or iD); a lawyer (to ensure compliance with an OSM-compatible license); an algorithm expert (to create a method for conflating new data with existing features); and an OSM expert (to tag new map features so they’re compatible with surrounding ones).
To simplify this process, we have partnered with Esri to release new OSM-ready data sets. Esri’s ArcGIS Hub, already a valuable source of geo data, and ArcGIS Online platform now includes authoritative, OSM-ready data sets. These data sets are OSM-tagged, compatibly licensed, and available to use for building the map. To work with these new data sets, we are updating our Map With AI tech stack, which previously supported only AI-derived data. Rather than placing the onus on OSM contributors to annotate, ingest, conflate, tag, and ensure license compatibility, this new combined approach provides: